CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire

Since Glenn Beck left Headline News for Fox, CNN executives apparently feel that their staff is short on unbalanced hatemongers. To make up the gap, they’ve just hired Erick Erickson as a political commentator.

“Prominent conservative commentator and RedState.com editor Erick Erickson will join CNN as a political contributor,” CNN announced in a March 16 press release. “Erickson will appear weeknights on John King, USA, which launches Monday, March 22, as well as provide perspective and commentary to other programs across the network.”

Who is Erickson? Well, he’s a racist who declared that Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize because of “affirmative action quotas” (Think Progress, 10/9/09). He’s a misogynist who suggested that “feminazis were enraged” by an anti-abortion Super Bowl ad because “that’s what being too ugly to get a date does to your brain.” He urged that “ugly feminists return to their kitchens” (Media Matters, 2/8/10). He’s a homophobe who asserted that “the full gay rights agenda” means that “men and boys can have sexual relationships free of prudish moral people frowning” (Media Matters, 10/9/09).

He’s an all-around nasty human being who, upon Justice David Souter’s retirement, called him “the only goat-fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court” (Crooks and Liars, 5/1/09). He declared that White House spokesperson Linda Douglass “really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House healthcare shop” (TPM, 10/12/09). Meanwhile, he suggested that Obama might be worse than Hitler, writing, “Does it say more about the IOC or Obama that the IOC gave Hitler the Olympics, but not Obama?”

As if that weren’t enough, he’s also an advocate of political violence (Yglesias, 4/1/09):

At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?At some point soon, it will happen. It’ll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. It’s not a partisan issue…. Were I in Washington State, I’d be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.

(Note that the tyranny to which he was calling for armed resistance involved regulation of dishwashing soap.)

If Erickson is not beyond the pale, then CNN has no pale.

ACTION: Please write to CNN and ask them to explain how hiring a commentator of Erick Erickson’s ilk can possibly conform to the network’s standards and practices.